


Here Comes The Sun

by only_freakin_donuts



Series: Princess Diaries [1]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Autism Acceptance Month 2019, F/M, I miss Amy Preston, Mother-Daughter Relationship, lucy found her singing voice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 07:12:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18331154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_freakin_donuts/pseuds/only_freakin_donuts
Summary: A story about Lucy finding her singing voice again, treading new waters as a parent of a neurodiverse child, and the sun finally coming out.





	Here Comes The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Autism Acceptance Day 2019! I hope you're wearing #redinstead today and treating everybody you come across with kindness and respect, no matter their neurodiversities! 
> 
> In 2019, I've learned a lot more about autism spectrum disorder and how it affects families and individuals, admittedly I was pretty uneducated before. In a class I'm currently taking, one of my professor's professional background is in child development and working in the autism field. In this class, I've learned about the cycle of thinking parents tend to go through when their child is diagnosed on the spectrum. It made me think of Lucy and the Logan family, and the fact that I'd previously stated their daughter Amy is on the spectrum. We also learned about parents finding the best way to communicate and get through to their child, be it through drawing, action, or music. That struck a cord with me, I thought it would strike one with Lucy and Amy as well. 
> 
> If you have any questions or any feedback at all, please drop me line in the comments section or message me on tumblr at @only-freakin-sunflowers. Again, happy Autism Acceptance Day (and month) to all, and enjoy the fic!

“ _Wyatttt_ ,” Lucy groans, hearing crying on the baby monitor once more. “Someone’s crying.”  
“Is it you?” he asks, with that mid-night, joking tone of his.  
Lucy laughs, even though she wants to cry. “It’s gonna be me in a minute. Can you go, please?”  
He rises to his feet with a grumble, headed for his babies’ room. 

He returns with both infants in his arms, one turning the edge of his t-shirt into a soggy mess. Lucy smiles and reaches her arms out for her daughters. “Hi my babies, hello. Hello.”  
“Hi Mommy,” Wyatt says, waving. “Hi Mommy.” With one hand, Alice rubs her eye, and with the other, she waves back, making Lucy laugh. She’s loving the age her babies are at– they’re still her little babies, but they’re growing so fast and changing every day. And they were their own little people, their own, unique people.

For example, Alice loved scrambled eggs. Amy couldn’t stand them, and she cried at the sight of them, But she would eat fruit, sometimes. Maybe.  
Alice was almost crawling, she was so close. Amy… not quite yet. She’d get there, though.  
Alice was always smiling and laughing. Amy laughed too, but you had to tickle her a little bit to get there. More times than not, she’d just laugh because Alice was laughing.  
And she loved to rub things on her face, she has to rub everything on her face. Even the things she knows she won’t like the feeling of.

Lucy doesn’t quite understand it, but she’s trying to. She’s trying to understand everything about the two of the best mysteries she’s ever been blessed with. She doesn’t think she ever will, but she’ll die trying, cause she loves these kids more than anything, for all their oddities and all their differences. 

... Even when Amy cries. “What’s wrong, lovebug?” Lucy asks, scooping her up. “What’s wrong?”  
“Is it her teeth again?” Wyatt asks, trying to take a peek inside her little mouth.  
Lucy shakes her head. “I don’t know. Come here, bug, come on.” She lays her down on her chest, offering her a boob for comfort. She was trying to wean them off breastfeeding, Alice was weaning better than Amy was, she liked the comfort of breastfeeding. She also liked the comfort of Lucy’s voice, even if it was just hummed lullabies or a hushed conversation. It was never a full song. 

“It’s like you want to sing to her but you can’t,” Wyatt says, searching for his wife’s eyes.  
She shakes her head, her eyes stuck on her daughter, quiet now because she’s eating. “Can’t.”  
“I won’t be the one to push you,” he says. “I just know you got a beautiful voice, and I think your daughter would enjoy it.”  
“Oh, at this hour she’s _my_ daughter?” Lucy chuckles.  
“She is _always your_ daughter,” Wyatt responds. “Everything she does is all you, all the time. But this one,” he looks at the baby on his chest, just chillin’ like a villain, “this one’s all me, look at her.”  
Lucy giggles, reaching a hand out to Alice’s back. “I love them, so much,” she starts, “but, I worry about them too, so much. I have worried about them every second since we found there were two of them to worry about. 

“I worry about Amy more.”  
They haven’t wanted to talk about it, but Wyatt worried about her too. “I just… maybe it’s just who she is, I don’t want to feel like there’s something wrong with her just because she’s different… but…”  
“You don’t feel like there’s something _wrong_ with her,” Wyatt points out. “It isn’t something _wrong_.”  
Lucy locks eyes with him, looking worried. He leans in and kisses her forehead, then kisses Amy’s. “We’re all gonna be okay,” he assures them. “I’m gonna go get this one back down in her crib, hopefully by the time I’m back number two will be ready too?”  
Lucy nods. She feels Amy sucking less, getting sleepy, her little eyelids fluttering. 

When it’s just them two in the room, she tries. She tries to find her voice for her, set it to a tune, sing her baby to sleep. She wanted to, she’d had visions ever since she was a little girl, singing lullabies to her baby. But not just lullabies- Fleetwood Mac songs, and Eric Clapton. She hadn’t expected to be silenced by fear– fear of the bad things that seemed to happen when the ghost of music escaped her, or fear of what was in store for her baby.  
“One day, Ames,” she promises her, barely above a whisper. Amy doesn’t look up or acknowledge that she hears Lucy, not the way her sister would. Lucy loved her anyways. “We’ll both get where we’re going.” 

-

By eighteen months, the developmental screenings rang conclusive. The girls weren’t developing at the same rate, Amy was falling behind. By 24 months, they had a conclusive diagnosis. Autism spectrum disorder. Level one, high functioning. (The doctors used that term, high-functioning. Lucy wasn’t sure she liked it, and she’d strayed away from using it, mostly.)

People made assumptions, when they heard the term autism. People made more assumptions when you added in the term “high functioning”. Instead of either of those terms, Lucy just preferred to call her daughter Amy. You know, by her name, not by a label. She had two daughters, Amy and Alice. She didn’t love them any differently, just because they were different from each other. 

She cared for them differently. As a mother and as a parent who would homeschool her girls when they became school-age, she had to educate herself on how to do this whole “raising a child with autism” thing. She loved Amy the same as Alice, but she couldn’t raise her the same way. 

Alice had tantrums like any other terribles two did, and after a while they subsided. Amy’s took longer.  
Alice liked to play with cars and stuffed animals. Amy was really just content to play with her own fingers, and her ears, she loved to play with her ears.  
Then there was the fact that Amy screamed like a banshee in the shower. You would swear Lucy was trying to kill her, when really just wanted her to be clean. 

And, one more thing. Amy still wouldn’t smile on her own. You still had to tickle her feet or poke her belly to provoke any form of positive emotion out of her– or get Alice to smile, and then Amy would follow, she loved following what her sissy did. The other day Alice blew a kiss and tried to say “I love you”, while they were all eating lunch. Lucy’s heart just about melted, and she called Wyatt when the girls were napping and told him in tears.  
“How about Amy?” Wyatt asked.  
Lucy shook her head. “Not yet,” she answered simply. “I know she loves me too, though. She just can’t say it yet. I love her too.” 

Lucy felt like she said it more often, about Amy, as if she had to prove something. She didn’t want to prove anything, she didn’t want to _feel_ like she had to prove anything. _“I promise I love her even when she’s challenging, even when she won’t go to sleep because she says it isn’t time yet and even when she won’t let me comb the knots from her hair, and even when she cries and I don’t know why she’s crying, I love her, I do, I promise!”_ She didn’t feel like she had to promise when it came to Alice, it just… was. Amy took a little more work.

But those nights, when she wouldn’t sleep, and Lucy laid beside her in her little toddler bed and willed for her to sleep while her eyes stayed wide open, she wouldn’t trade them for anything. She still couldn’t find the words to sing, but she felt them coming in. Lately, she’d been having dreams of her daughter’s namesake, her sister. What she wouldn’t give to have Amy around to meet her girls, she would’ve absolutely adored them. And they would’ve adored her too, she would’ve been the fun aunt. Amy only appeared in Lucy’s dreams when she was feeling guilty about something, and she always told her not to feel guilty- or rather, that it was okay for her to feel whatever it was she was feeling, be that guilt or loss or frustration. All her feelings were validated. She also said something else.

 _“You could sing on those feelings, that’s what younger you would do. I know she’s still in there somewhere.”_

And lying here in her baby’s bed, again Lucy wanted to sing. She could hear her sister in her head, telling her _“don’t be afraid, Lucy, c’mon. I’ve got your back.”_  
Instead, she runs her fingers in her daughter’s tangly hair, and she hums, one of her sister’s favourite songs. “Your Auntie Amy loves you, bug,” she whispers. “And I love you.” 

-

Lucy loved her even when she was loud, and she was on her last nerve with her. And when she was quiet, and wouldn’t speak a word. When she was crying, and Lucy wanted to cry with her. When she didn’t understand all the big feelings going on in her small child’s head, when it looked like everything was terrible and nothing could fix it. 

“Baby, what is _wrong_?” Lucy asks, as if Amy would just use her words and tell her. Amy was new to this whole ‘using her words’ thing as it was, she expressed her feelings in other ways. And sometimes, just, through crying, when the feelings became all too much.  
“Mommy, why’s Amy crying?” Alice asks. “Amy, wha’s wrong?”  
“I don’t know, Al,” Lucy huffs. “Can you go play in your room for a minute, babe, I think Amy just needs a quiet minute.” 

She scoops her up, brushed her sweaty hair off her forehead, and tries to wrap her in a hug. She’d read somewhere that pressure would make it better, compress her nervous system, something or rather. “Come on, babe,” she mumbles lightly. “It’s okay. I know it’s a little bit hot in here, and we haven’t gone outside today cause it’s raining, and I think this sweater is making you itchy but you insist on wearing it and you won’t let me tie your hair up and you missed your nap today–”  
Amy was still trying to wriggle out of their embrace, crying so hard she wasn’t taking deep breaths, so Lucy had to think quick and creative here. “Uh, uh, uhhhh… _Here comes the sun, do do do do…_ ”  
Slowly, two glossy, brown eyes rise to almost make eye contact, looking for where the voice is coming from. “ _Here comes the sun, and I say_ ,” Lucy continues, her voice starting to sound a little less rough. “ _It’s all right_.”

Amy kept her eyes trained on her mom, those cries slowly subsiding to just whimpers as the song drew to an end. “More?”  
Lucy was almost startled by the little voice. She nods. “S-sure, bug.” 

She rocked her gently, stroked her hair, and sung all of her sister’s favourite songs that she knew the words to. Eventually, she had a silent little lovebug in her arms, lulled to sleep. And sure enough, literally and figuratively, the sun had come out.  
Lingering in the doorway was a smiling husband, having come to work to hear the sweet sound of his wife’s singing voice. It had been… damn near ninety years since he’d heard that. Lucy imagined the ghost of her little sister standing there with him, a tired smile after dancing around the room, sliding along the hardwood in her socks. 

Wyatt makes his way over to the couch, plopping down beside his wife and their daughter and planting a kiss on both their foreheads. “If you wake her I’ll kill you,” Lucy warns.  
Wyatt motions defeat with his hands, a smirk making its way onto his face. “You finally found what calms her down, it looks like,” he offers. “You found your music again.” 

“It was always my sister that pushed me to start singing again, after the accident,” Lucy tells him, her voice lazy and low. “I didn’t, ever. She’d sing, badly, in attempt to get me to join her, the way we used to as teenagers, hairbrush karaoke to The Backstreet Boys or Britney Spears, and it just never came. Then back in 1933, you, and the party, and Hollywood, it came back, for a night. But so many bad things seemed to follow that, like I was in college all over again and things were falling apart only so much worse, like there was some sort of curse that was set cause I was trying to be happy.” She rubs Amy’s back, and takes a deep breath. “But nothing bad’s gonna happen this time, there’s no curse anymore. Music makes me happy and calms me down and it makes her happy and calms her down. And that’s a good thing, I’m not letting anything take that from us.”  
“I’m not letting anyone take that from you guys either,” Wyatt reassures her. 

“Maybe I’ll even bust out my horrible singing voice for a lullaby one night.”  
“ _Please_ do. Your daughter would enjoy it.”  
Wyatt laughs. “Oh, she’s _my_ daughter now, is she?”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes this is set in the Princess Diaries verse even though I apparently retcon-ed Archer's existence in this. Whoops. He exists, I swear, and I love him too.


End file.
